When an insured vehicle is damaged and a vehicle insurance claim is made, typically a representative of the insurance company or carrier (e.g., an adjustor, assessor, or other agent) assesses the damage and generates an estimate of a settlement payment from the insurance company to a repair facility for repairing at least some portion of the damages to the vehicle, e.g., a “settlement estimate” at the insurance company/repair facility interface. This preliminary settlement estimate can include an initial list of parts that are thought of or initially determined as being needed to repair the vehicle, e.g., replacement parts. Typically, this initial list is generated by representative or agent of a repair shop or insurance company/carrier who manually generates the list based on his or her own experiences, e.g., by free response and/or by checking of boxes on a pre-populated list or form, by annotating images or pictures, or by being prompted by computer program to fill in fields and/or text. This initial list may be provided to or used by a particular repair facility that is to perform the repair work.
In many cases, upon performing its own inspection of the vehicle or upon tearing down the vehicle, the particular repair facility finds additional damage that was not identified in the estimate provided by the insurance carrier, as, for example, the repair facility is able to further access the vehicle and perform a more thorough examination than could an adjustor who generally writes estimates based only on damages he or she can see, discern, or identify first-hand. When damages and/or costs that were not indicated in the estimate are discovered, the repair facility requests an additional monetary amount or a “supplement” from the insurance carrier corresponding to the newly identified damages and/or costs. In some situations, the insurance carrier agrees to the supplement amount straightaway, and in some situations, the insurance carrier negotiates with the repair facility to agree on a set of authorized additional repairs and an amount of the supplement to cover the additional repairs. For some claims, more than one supplement may be requested during the claims resolution process, for example, when still additional damage is uncovered, when replacement parts are difficult to find, and for other reasons. An example description of settlements and supplements of vehicle insurance claims is provided in aforementioned, commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/168,345, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD OF PREDICTING A VEHICLE CLAIM SUPPLEMENT BETWEEN AN INSURANCE CARRIER AND A REPAIR FACILITY.”
In addition to generating estimated and actual monetary amounts, the claims resolution process may generate or produce occurrences of particular events, such as the generation of one or more supplement events. In another example, for a given vehicle insurance claim, one or more re-inspection events may occur during the claims resolution process. “Re-inspection,” as used herein, generally refers to auditing and evaluating the accuracy, quality, and timeliness of claim estimates and appraisals during the claims resolution process. Typically, a subset of all claims serviced by the repair facility is identified, by one or more human re-inspectors, for re-inspection. In most scenarios, the re-inspectors review the identified claims with respect to cost, claim cycle time, accuracy of supplement estimates, limitations, discounts, and/or other criteria by using a re-inspection score sheet or checklist. Examples of re-inspection processes are described in aforementioned, commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 8,095,391 and in aforementioned, commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/168,327 entitled “SYSTEMS AND METHODS OF PREDICTING VEHICLE CLAIM RE-INSPECTIONS.”
The vehicle insurance claims resolution process may generate or produce one or more customer service indicators (CSIs) or customer service scores that are indicative of customer feedback or the customer experience throughout the claims resolution process. For example, one CSI score may reflect the experience of a customer at First Notice of Loss (FNOL), another CSI score may reflect the customer's experience at the repair facility, and still another CSI score may reflect the customer's overall satisfaction with the resolution of the claim.
Indications of other resources, monetary amounts, costs, information, or other such items may be generated during the vehicle insurance claims resolution process. For example, an estimate and an actual final cost of parts needed to repair the damage to the vehicle may be generated by the claims resolution process, and/or an estimate and an actual final cost of labor to repair the damage to the vehicle may be generated by the claims resolution process. Additionally or alternatively, a final settlement or payout amount to be paid by the insurance carrier to an insured party may be generated or produced by the claims resolution process.